Touches You

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Dreadfully Boring

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Being sentenced to Earth after some unknown problem on another planet, one alien goes on a weird and wild quest to stay alive, one head at a time. What i mean by that is the alien can't survive unless he continues to switch heads, which is awesome! It reminds me of "The Hidden" where Kyle Mclaughlin is fighting an other worldly alien that just wants to drive fast cars and listen to heavy metal. Each movie contains a host alien, but only one contains Rae Dawn Chong! I'm mysteriously attracted to her in this, she pulls a bit of film noir and wields a badge, on the hunt for a rapist murderer. This movie has fabulous gore. There is very little back-round music, mostly white noise, giving it a creepy texture. Some real funny moments, and some nice out of focus stuff (theres a point in the movie where just peripheral to a conversation in the police headquarters a battle takes place between a cop and a wild street tough). The only problem i have with this movie is most of the interactions between Chong and her partner are labored and seem like a pacing problem. But all the sequences with the alien, ripping off heads or hitchhiking or pretending to be a human being, are highly awesome. The end is splat-tastic, a sequel is rumored but never done.

A criminal alien is sentenced to spend time on Earth ("A fate worse than death") but finds the climate doesn't agree with its genetics and its human head explodes. No problem, right? It just keeps grabbing heads off of victims (including a dog) and swapping them out to survive. Chicago cop Diana Pierce (Rae Dawn Chong) is on the case though. This was John McNaughton's follow-up feature to HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER and I will admit it has a genius set-up. Unfortunately, the film completely lacks focus and feels like two scripts slapped together. Chong's cop character, who apparently is assigned every case in and outside of the city, spends too much time obsessing over a rapist she busted and they try to wrap this into the alien head snatching plot. When the film focuses on the alien bits, it really shines thanks to great turns by Tom Towles as alien's first victim and Antonio Fargas as a homeless guy who befriends Towles. This was shot in the late 80s (a movie marquee offers DAKOTA) but not released until 1991. As a rule, this should always be played as a double feature with JT Petty's THE BURROWERS.

From John McNaughton, the mastermind behind Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, comes...The Borrower. Whereas Henry is disturbingly realistic, this is the exact opposite. The Borrower is completely absurd. An alien criminal and outcast is de-evolved to human form and exiled to earth. The de-evolution process, however, has made his body unstable and he must "borrow" other people's heads to survive. The story sounds good, but is obviously hard to execute. Tom Towles, also from Henry and numerous other genre classics, is hilarious as one of the borrowed heads. It's too bad that he has the least amount of screen time. The other cast members include Rae Dawn Chong as a detective investigating the murders and Antonio Fargas as a bum that befriends the Borrower. The music is awful and annoying but Kevin Yagher's make-up effects are sufficiently gross. Yagher's gore effects and Towle's performance are the main reasons to watch the movie. The box reads "more animated than Re-Animator" which is a lie but it should please the majority of horror fans.

... 'cause once that guy has your head, he won't give it back ;) This is an odd, bizarre little movie... the whole thing is as anticlimactic as it gets and there's no excitement or suspense at all. However, I prefer to take "The Borrower" as a look at society's problems seen through the eyes of an alien convict. This makes for some funny bits. There's one scene, where he sits in a coffee shop, doing nothing at all, and all people around him suddenly grab their guns and start killing each other. Then he he just gets up and walks away, like nothing what happened matters to him. The whole movie's like this. So, if you're going to watch this, think less of a horror movie, more of a social commentary and you know what you're in for. Recommended...